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Closing Rikers Is Just One Step for Justice Reform in NYC

Last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled the details of his plan to close the
jail complex at Rikers Island within a decade. As part of the plan,
smaller jails already operating in four boroughs would be replaced
or upgraded and expanded to house detainees that would have
previously been sent to Rikers.

Some community leaders and the corrections officers’ union
oppose the plan, instead calling for various reforms to the
existing facilities. But Rikers’ notoriety for cruelty, abuse
and mismanagement is well-earned and, as a result, Rikers Island
has become a symbol of systemic failure and mistreatment.

The prospect of rehabilitating or reforming the place is far
less appealing than closing the book on the Rikers era and using
the change as a springboard to reform not one jail complex but how
New York City handles its incarcerated population.

Fixing New York City’s
criminal justice system will require more than swapping
facilities.

Most important would be reforming the cash-bail system and
ensuring adequate mental health treatment outside jail complexes
like Rikers, which are ill-equipped to deal with such problems and
serve mostly to incubate and exacerbate them.

In recent weeks, the Corrections Officers’ Benevolent
Association has called on de Blasio to better protect its officers
after several were injured in assaults by inmates.
That’s reasonable, but the union simultaneously calls for
reinstating the use of solitary confinement against inmates under
21, which a growing number of advocates, commentators, academics
and health care professionals oppose, some considering it
tantamount to torture.

According to an independent commission report in 2017, Rikers
Island “functions as an expensive penal colony” that
suffers from a “culture of violence and neglect”
ranging from “daily humiliations” to “shocking
brutality.”

The Kalief Browder case, which brought renewed national interest
in conditions at the facility, typifies the problems not just with
Rikers itself, but New York City’s criminal justice system
writ large — especially the problems wrought by dependence on
cash bail.

Browder was awaiting trial for three years after his arrest for
misdemeanor theft when he was 16, but he couldn’t afford cash
bail. While incarcerated, he was attacked by both correctional
officers and inmates, and suffered the psychological horrors of
almost two years in solitary confinement, which may have
contributed to his suicide after his release.

It’s impossible to think of Browder’s time at Rikers
as anything but a cruel punishment despite never getting his day in
court. Most people who are arrested don’t need to be held in
jail until their court date. Cash or “money” bail
punishes the poor by keeping individuals in jail before
they’ve ever been convicted of a crime.

New York City has instituted some bail reforms, but more can be
done. Washington, DC, ended cash bail decades ago, with roughly 90
percent of arrestees released with some monitoring or agreement to
check in with authorities after an overnight stay and processing.
High-risk offenders are held over until trial.

Regardless of whether Rikers remains open, the city should move
further toward a system that holds fewer individuals who would be
free but for their inability to pay money bail.

Then there are the offenders who need mental health treatment,
not a jail cell on Rikers or anywhere else. Former corrections
leaders have publicly criticized the city’s lack of adequate mental
health resources.

Specifically, former state Correction Commissioner Brian Fischer
and former city Correction Commissioner Martin Horn suggest
creating new residential treatment centers to address chronic
mental health problems rather than having the jails house and
triage individuals after episodes resulting in arrest.

Putting the mentally ill in cages can endanger the individual as
well as fellow inmates and corrections officers. This, too, should
change regardless of Rikers’ fate.

Fixing New York City’s criminal justice system will require more than swapping facilities. The
city should eliminate money bail and put resources into mental
health and other diversion programs to get offenders the help they
need, and the corrections officers all over the city deserve safer
work environments. Meaningful and achievable reforms will be better
for the city, offenders and corrections officers — and it’s
hard to imagine those reforms relying upon a new and improved
Rikers Island.